She was speaking to Sir Cradock, who had followed her from the stewardʼs room, and who seemed as much put out as a proud man of fifty ever cares to show himself. He made no answer, and the two poor children fell back against a side–bench.
“Iʼll no talk o’ matters noo. Youʼve a giʼen me my refoosal, and I tak’ it once for all. But yeʼll be sorry for the day ye did it, Craydock Nowell”.
To the great amazement of Hogstaff, who was more taken aback than any one else, Sir Cradock Nowell, without a word, walked to the wide front door with ceremony, as if he were leading a peeress out. He did not offer his arm to the woman, but neither did he shrink from her; she gathered her dark face up again from its softening glance at the children, and without another word or look, but sweeping her skirt around her, away she walked down the broad front road, as stiff and as stern as the oak–trees.
CHAPTER VI.
The lapse of years made little difference with the Reverend John Rosedew, except to mellow and enfranchise the heart so free and rich by nature, and to pile fresh stores of knowledge in the mind so stored already. Of course the parson had his faults. In many a little matter his friends could come down upon him sharply, if minded so to do. But any one so minded would not have been fit to be called John Rosedewʼs friend.
His greatest fault was one which sprang from his own high chivalry. If once he detected a person, whether taught or untaught, in the attempt to deceive or truckle, that person was to him thenceforth a thing to be pitied and prayed for. Large and liberal as his heart was, charitable and even lenient to all other frailties, the presence of a lie in the air was to it as ozone to a test–paper. And then he was always sorry afterwards when he had shown his high disdain. For who could disprove that John Rosedew himself might have been a thorough liar, if trained and taught to consider truth a policeman with his staff drawn?
Another fault John Rosedew had—and I do not tell his foibles (as our friends do) to enjoy them—he gave to his books and their bygone ages much of the time which he ought to have spent abroad in his own little parish. But this could not be attributed to any form of self–indulgence. Much as he liked his books, he liked his flock still better, but never could overcome the idea that they would rather not be bothered. If any one were ailing, if any one were needy, he would throw aside his Theophrastus, and be where he was wanted, with a mild sweet voice and gentle eyes that crannied not, like a craneʼs bill, into the family crocks and dustbin. It was a part, and no unpleasant one, of his natural diffidence, that he required a poor manʼs invitation quite as much as a rich oneʼs, ere ever he crossed the threshold; unless trouble overflowed the impluvium. In all the parish of Nowelhurst there was scarcely a man or a woman who did not rejoice to see the rector pacing his leisurely rounds, carrying his elbows a little out, as men with large deltoid muscles do, wearing his old hat far back on his head, so that it seemed to slope away from him, and smiling quietly to himself at the children who tugged his coat–tails for an orange or a halfpenny. He never could come out but what the urchins of the village were down upon him as promptly as if he were apple–pie; and many of them had the impudence to call him “Uncle John” before his hair was grey.
Instead of going to school, the boys were apprenticed to him in the classics; and still more pleasantly he taught them to swim, and fish, and row. Of riding he knew but little, except from the treatise of Xenophon, and a paper on the Pelethronian Lapiths; so they learned it as all other boys do, by dint of crown and hard bumpage. Moreover, Mark Stote, head gamekeeper, took them in hand very early as his pupils in woodcraft and gunnery. To tell the truth, Uncle John objected to this accomplishment; he thought that the wholesome excitement and exercise of shooting afforded scarcely a valid reason for the destruction of innocent life. However, he recollected that he had not always thought so—his conversion having been wrought by the shrieks of a wounded hare—neither did he expect to bind all the world with his own girdle. Sir Cradock insisted that the young idea should be taught to shoot, and both the young ideas took to it very kindly.